01c. 1935 ADA man can do a lot of damage in the church. When someone comes here, he's got his guard up. But in church a man's wide open.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
02c. 1935 ADAnd now submarines are armed with mass murder, our silly, only way of deterring mass murder.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
04c. 1935 ADYou are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
06c. 1935 ADThe face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?John Steinbeck / quote ↗
08c. 1935 ADComing out of sleep, I had the advantage of two worlds, the layered firmament of dream and the temporal fixtures of the mind awake. I stretched luxuriously—a good and tingling sensation. It's as though the skin has shrunk in the night and one must push it out to daytime size by bulging the muscles, and there's an a itching pleasure in it.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
09c. 1935 ADI have thought the difference might be that my Mary knows she will live forever, that she will step from the living into another life as easily as she slips from sleep to wakefulness. She knows this with her whole body, so completely that she does not think of it any more than she thinks to breathe. Thus she has time to sleep, time to rest, time to cease to exist for a little.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
11c. 1935 ADThe writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
12c. 1935 ADI know, Ma. I'm a-tryin'. But them deputies- Did you ever see a deputy that didn't have a fat ass? An' they waggle their ass an' flop their gun aroun'. Ma", he said, "if it was the law they was workin' with, why we could take it. But it ain't the law. They're a-working away at our spirits. They're a-tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They're tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're working on our decency".John Steinbeck / quote ↗
13c. 1935 ADA man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
14c. 1935 ADIf a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
15c. 1935 ADAnd, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule - a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting - only the deeply personal and familiar.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
16c. 1935 AD... you can't start with a democracy. You have to work up through stuff like tyranny and monarchy first. That way people are so relived when they get to democracy that they hang on to it.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
17c. 1935 ADCrooks stood up from his bunk and faced her. "I had enough," he said coldly. "You got no rights comin' in a colored man's room. You got no rights messing around in here at all. Now you jus' get out, an' get out quick. If you don't, I'm gonna ast the boss not to ever let you come in the barn no more."She turned on him in scorn. "Listen, Nigger," she said. "You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?"Crooks stared helplessly at her, and then he sat down on his bunk and drew into himself.She closed on him. "You know what I could do?"Crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall. "Yes, ma'am.""Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny."Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego--nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, "Yes, ma'am," and his voice was toneless.For a moment she stood over him as though waiting for him to move so that she could whip at him again; but Crooks sat perfectly still, his eyes averted, everything that might be hurt drawn in. She turned at last to the other two.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
18c. 1935 ADIt is easy, out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice!John Steinbeck / quote ↗
19c. 1935 ADOlive was way beyond hearing anything, but her chin was set and she was determined to help the pilot so that he would not be too afraid before they hit the earth. She smiled and nodded again. At the end of each stunt he looked back, and each time she encouraged him. Afterward he said over and over, "She's the goddamest woman I ever saw. I tore up the rule book and she wanted more. Good Christ, what a pilot she would have made!John Steinbeck / quote ↗
20c. 1935 ADHow can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)John Steinbeck / quote ↗
21c. 1935 ADWhen a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
22c. 1935 ADThe bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
23c. 1935 ADSome of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists - must have - as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You've scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
24c. 1935 ADFunny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it's part of him, and it's like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn't doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way he's bigger because he owns it. Even if he isn't successful he's big with his property. That is so.''But let a man get property he doesn't see, or can't take time to get his fingers in, or can't be there to walk on it - why, then the property is the man. He can't do what he wants, he can't think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big - and he's the servant of his property. That is so, too.John Steinbeck / quote ↗
